by Erik M. Dell

Created on: February 02, 2009   Last Updated: August 22, 2009

Making the decision to move on to graduate school can be an important career move, no matter how old you are. Graduate school offers many benefits and very little downside. By attending more school you get the chance to network and meet new people. Also you will sharpen your skills to fine point in matters of business. By placing the choice of going on to get your MBA on your resume you are saying I want more. My story and tips are as follows:

I finished my undergraduate degree at the end of the spring semester of 2005 at the University of Connecticut. From there I went to work at Sears in Waterford, Connecticut as the Home Improvement lead (kind of like a manager but not really). After toiling away for about 6 months in this high stress job I got a tip about a job opening as a contractor at Pfizer. I went and interviewed in January of 2006 and did well, receiving an offer within a few hours of the end of the interview.

For the next three years here is what I learned. To make the jump from computer tech to manager in a larger pharmaceutical company takes an act of god. Now don't get me wrong I loved each and every one of my jobs at Pfizer since January 2006 (I rotated on and off a few projects). But having owned my own business for 3 years in the early part of the twenty-first century I knew I wanted more. I wanted to be back in a management role.

Fast forward to December 2008. I had been flirting with the notion of going back to graduate school to bolster my resume for much of 2008. Well, in December I had an epiphany and decided I wanted to attend the Spring 2009 semester. The only problem was I had nothing ready, absolutely nothing. Here is what I did to get accepted to the part-time MBA program at the University of Connecticut's School of Business in Hartford (whew, that's a mouthful).

The very first thing I did was call up and see if I could get a waiver for the dreaded GMAT. That was a big no, so I went to www.mba.com and started up an account at the website. From there I pleaded with my parents to give me the $250 test fee. After a little wrangling I managed to make my test date on January 9th. I then booked over to Borders (hope you got that pun) and purchased the best prep book I could find which happened to be the Princeton Review book. I then immediately placed that book somewhere where I knew it would collect dust just for procrastination sakes.I then applied online to the school and bookmarked the requirements page. I pretty much reviewed

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